Shandong Pictures

Here they are, pictures from the weekend in Shandong, including the infamous ones of the Baijiu corp distributing baijiu on the train!

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=elfugkt.av4ouril&x=1&y=-xl024u

Shandong Weekend

Another weekend passed, another weekend spent away from Beijing. Just got back from a 4 day trip to Shandong Province (thanks, Adam, for inviting me!). It was such a great time - four days of great scenery, little sleep, and more stair climbing than I have done in my entire life.

Like always, when there's been a massive influx of new memories, sights, smells, tastes and sounds - too many, probably, for most people to read through - here's a list of the best of the most meoriable moments from these past few days:

- The hard seats from Beijing to Qufu (hometown of Confucious) and trying to make it as comfortable as possible for 1o hours...even if it means using Chris.
- Hauling ass to the summit of Taishan, the holiest mountain in China. It takes most people at least 4 - 5 hours to reach the sumit. It took us 4.5 hours. I'm actually very proud of myself for making it. I really didn't think that I could've, given how out of shape I was. But 6,600 steps later, I made it! :)
- Rachel and I always at the rear of the team! And much thanks to our group's token African, Tom, for walking with us and helping us out for the later leg (and the hardest climb) of the mountain.
- Stairs, stairs, and more stairs...my legs were in pain for the next 2 days.
- "What do you call this?"
" The mountain that's fucking hell to climb."
- Sunset at Taishan's summit.
- The campers pitching their tents on top of a sewage tank.
- The faux scenario I told the hotel staff, in order for the to leave us alone and not find out the extra person in our room. "They can't control premarital sex, right?"
- Nanfei (South African Tom) reclimbing Taishan in search of his lost shoe.
- Very close to falling off Chris in order to get the edible flowers.
- "I have a pine tree up my ass!" - Rachel
- Taking longer to walk down the mountain than climbing up.
- Dinner the first night at Qingdao, curtesy of Rachel's friend's brother, Gao.
- Drinking cold Tsingdao beer in Qingdao! :)
- Walking around the lovely, lovely, seaside city of Qingdao - it really is like a little Bavaria in the middle of China! It's hard to believe that it's really the same country!
- Seeing the ocean and smelling the salty air again!
- The chatty old man who told us his whole life story in 15 minutes...and kept on talking...and talking...and talking...
- The foreigners playing the rifle game and drawing a whole big crowd.
- The shaokao dinner again with Gao! And all the huge pitchers of beer...
- Singing Happy Birthday to Chris at 1 am.
- How absolutely gone everyone was (that is, everyone besides me - really!), via Tsingdao.
- The HUGE bottle of baijiu, bought for 18 RMB - about 2 USD!!
- Patrick managing to turn the power switch off in the submarine at the Naval Museum.
- Operation Baijiu - brain child of Chris and Patrick. Basically, dispersing our huge bottle of baijiu to our fellow train passangers. "We're going to be fucking legends!" - Chris
- The song we sang while passing out the baijiu: "Wo men gay ne bai jiu, mian fei! Wo men gay ne baijiu, mian fei! Wo men gai ne, wo men gai ne, wo men gai ne bai jiu, gan bei!" Translated roughly: We give you baijiu, for free! We give you bai jiu, for free! We give you, we give you, we give you baijiu, cheers!

Pictures will be up soon. What a great weekend...

Urge to Laugh

Sometimes, I get an overwhelming sensation of happiness. This can happen at anytime and at anywhere, whether it's the way light falls on the jagged edge of a mountain edge or when warm wind blow hair away from my face. But when it does, I just get the urge to laugh, and smile, and laugh. At times like that, I am just happy to be alive and I realize that everything was worth it. That every year, every month, every day, every hour, every second, was all worth it. It's times like that where I can't help but smile, but most of all, to feel the air fill my lungs, and laugh till my face hurts...to realize the preciousness of each nano-second and laugh the sincere laugh where I realize that this life is beautiful - and nothing can take that away.

Chengde 2

Adam
Originally uploaded by sheilaz413.

Since Adam posted such a lovely picture of me on his blog, here's a lovely picture of the love slave himself. The context of this picture was this: after a weekend of neglecting his Chinese, Adam finally pulls out a sheet of homework that was suppose to be due on Friday. After staring at it for 15 minutes and having Paulina, myself, as well as the two exchange students sitting next to us help him the whole time, Adam decided to take a nap. :)

Other highlights of the trip which I didn't write about before:
- Love Master Mouna and her Love Slave!
- Chris and his West Bengali and pretentious British accent
- Chris trying to get a student rate at the temples and palaces..."But I'm a student...I'm going to go hungry tonight. Are you happy?...You are very pretty!"
- The first hotel room we saw. Gross.
- The KFC breakfasts - and the line outside of KFC at 9am, waiting for it to open!
- Finding a place to eat dinner, Saturday night - and the sour eggplants we got at the restuarant we finally chose.

Here's the link to a few of the pictures I took at Chengde. There's not too many of them, but still...

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=elfugkt.271nmymt&x=1&y=-pskxxb

Weekend in Chengde

Chengde
Originally uploaded by sheilaz413.

This weekend, I went to the old imperial summer palace at Chengde. The weekend travel group consisted of Adam, Chris (who happened to have went to IU for a year!), Paulina, and myself.

I got up on Saturday morning at an ungodly hour and was on the train by 7:40am. The four hour train ride was interesting, especially when Chris was entertaining the Chinese pasangers besides me with his Chinese.

The weather for all of saturday was rainy and left an ugly shade of brown and gray the whole day, lefving little to be desired for. When we first arrived, our first mission was to find a place to sleep for the night. After visiting a number of hotels, Adam and Chris finally decided to not be penny-pinchers (haha!) and we settled with a hotel that offered us 2 rooms at 100 RMB each (that's about 9 USD).

In the afternoon, we started our Chengde sightseeing by going to two temples. They were both very Tibetan/Mongolian inspired, an interesting fact since Chengde is geographically far away from both places. The picture, by the way, is from the first temple.

We finished our two temple excursion in the late afternoon, so we decided to contribute in helping Chengde's economy by visiting one of it's 3 bars. A number of TsingDao's and platefuls of pistachio's later (which we scarved down like wolves), Adam and Chris were certifiably buzzed. As well, it was almost 9pm and we are missing dinner!

A night's restless sleep at the slightly seedy hotel later, Sunday turned out to be glorious - an velvet blue sky day and the beautiful, bright sun.

Sunday's main objective was to see the imperial summer palace. Everything started pretty normal...until we reached the bus ride part of the park where they demaded another 40 RMB (we have already paid 90 RMB for the entrance ticket. The Forbidden City's entrance fee is only 60 RMB!!). In the end, that was decided to be unacceptable, so our alternative was to walk the 5 mile mountain road.

Two and a half hours later, we were yelled at by a kinda scary man, walked along the mini-great wall, and caught some very nice scenery.

I enjoyed the train ride back more than the one to Chengdu. It's a wonder what the sun and a blue sky can do for the scenery outside. The emrald mountains were lovely and we even passed 2 different sections of the Great Wall.

Soon enough, we reached Beijing, thus ending another weekend in China. Pretty!

Sunday at the Forbidden City

Forbidden City
Originally uploaded by sheilaz413.

Europeans at Forbidden City

Delfy & Ellen
Originally uploaded by sheilaz413.

Another Week in Beijing

There's a little food stall on a street corner in Shuan Yu Shu, near the MC office. Previously, when I have walked pass this food stall, they sold traditional, ready-to-eat Chinese street food. Yesterday when I walked passed the stall, amongst the roasted nuts, there were French fries. Heaps and heaps of golden French fries just waiting to be sold and end up on someone's dinner plate. Of all the places to sell French fries! I wonder if they are any good... If it's not that great, McDonald's is just up the street anyway. And for healthier alternatives, the Subways in the adjacent street has a special deal on Tuesdays. Buy one get one free.

During the taxi ride home last night, the driver asked me if I was a foreigner or not. I tell him, no, I'm from Beijing. Why does he ask? He replied because when I speak Mandarin, I sound like a Korean. That's the second time since I've been back someone thought I spoke Chinese like a Korean. A few years ago, people usually thought I sounded like a Xingjiang person when I spoke Mandarin. I wonder how long I have to live in Beijing to sound like a Beijinger again.

Cooked at the MC apartment last night and taught Ellen how to make some simple Chinese dishes. Mixed cucumbers, stir-fried eggs and tomatoes, tomatoe and sugar, and a winter mellon soup. For protein, we obtained some Yan Rou Chuar (xingjiang style lamb kebabs). Dessert was a pastry cream cake. For kicks, I taught Ellen and Delphy how to play Zheng Shan You after dinner. Once they were proficient, we raised the stake by infusing Rose Wine and Pim's into the game.

Tonight we're going to the Chinese Opera and tomorrow, hot pot dinner. Hopefully, this weekend I will find myself in Chengde. I won't mind a change of sceneary from Beijing right about now.

The weather is getting better. After a day of rain, the blue sky that appeared yesterday afternoon looked glorious (yes, there really are days when the smog dissapears for a bit and the sky is blue!).

Eurotrip with Europeans

Yesterday, I spent a very fine day at the Forbidden City and Wanfujing Night Snack Street, spent with Delfy from Germany and Ellen from the Netherlands, we decided to wrap the day up by watching a movie. After we spent 15 minutes at an entertainment store near the MC office, we came up with a winner. Eurotrip. I had recently talked a little bit about the movie with the two European Lao Wai, telling them how funny the film was. And being how the movie covers both of the two's country of origin, it was decided that the movie was a must see.

10 rmb (a little bit over 1 US Dollar), a pirated movie, and a few hours later, "Scotty doesn't know" was in everyone's head.

Whenever I watch this movie now, I always think of Casino Night 2005. Ahh, the memories and the forties.

Fiona!!!

Cultural Differences

The differences between house parties in Beijing and house parties in the state is that in Beijing, you need to take off your shoes at the party.

The Wind Speaks

A while ago, I read an article in the New York Times about a woman who lost her husband during 9.11. The article wrote that from a very young age, she believed that the deceased could express themselves through the wind. During the nadir of her despair while she was grieving the loss of her husband, a strong gust of wind came out of no where in an otherwise calm day and enveloped her for a few minutes. Thus, she believed that through the wind, her husband was trying to tell her that everything will be alright.

I'd like to believe that wind could carry the spirits of those departed and through them, could communicate to those still living.

It's been very windy in Beijing these past few days.

Flight

Unexpected news means I must take flight, thus prematurely ending my time in Bloomington and missing graduation. Next time I log on, it will be from another land, at another time.

Till then, take care.

Email me if you need me.

A New Toy

I just bought myself a new toy to celebrate graduation!

Canon's Powershot A95!!! It's like the Canon Powershot G5 that I used for class a few semesters ago and loved so much, only a few hundred bucks cheaper.

I've always loved photography and taking photos. Now I can start experimenting with lighting and shutter/aperture!

So happy I have a new toy to play with. :-)

sunglasses

sunglasses
Originally uploaded by sheilaz413.

How many men does it take to take a pair of sunglasses away from a baby? Three and counting!

Pretty Boy

Pretty Boy
Originally uploaded by sheilaz413.

Pretty boy from Sangla.

Chitkul Girl

child 3
Originally uploaded by sheilaz413.

Another picture I took from this past summer in Himachal Pradesh, India. I played around with it as well and kinda liked the result.

Young'ns

novice
Originally uploaded by sheilaz413.

A picture I took from this past summer. I finally got around to scanning a few of them!